A-2 THE SUNDAY STAR Wadb'ngtcn, 0. C., Novembtr 25, 1962 SILENT SPRING |i f Chemical Controls Pose Dangers - Continued From Pare A-l silenced the voices of spring in countless towns In America? Tfiis is an attempt to explain. Mbn Alters Nature !The history of life on earth has been a history of inter a&ion between living things and their surroundings. To a. la£ge extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the en vironment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surround ings, has been relatively slight. Oflly within the moment of time represented by the pres ent century has one species— man—a cqul re d significant power to alter the nature of his world. During the past quarter cen tury thia power has not only increased to one of disturbing magnitude but it has changed in Character. The most alarm ing of all man's assaults upon the environment is the con tamination of air, earth, riv ers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable; the chain of evil it ‘initiates not only in the world that must support life huf living tissues is for the most part irreversible. In this now universal contamination of the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little recfognized partners of radia tion in changing the very na ture of the world—the very nature of its life. The problem whose attempted solution has brought such a train of disas ter in its wake is an accom paniment of our modern way of life. Long before the age of man. Insects inhabited the earth—a group of extraordinarily varied and adaptable beings. Over the course of time since man's ad vent, a small percentage of the mdhe than half a million spe cies of insects have come into conflict with human welfare in two principal ways: as com petitors for the food supply and as carriers of human disease. Disease-carrying insects be come important where human beings are crowded together, &r 2 Scientists Find Clues To Why Plants Flower * By RALPH DIGHTON Press Science Writer PASADENA. Calif., Nov. 24. detectives are making headway in their 50- year search for an elusive something that, trapped and put to work, could multiply the world’s food supplies YDne of their problems, they new have learned, is that it works only at night. ■The elusive substance makes plants flower and bear fruit. Its name is florigen, a hor-j nfone. biologists at the Cali-’ fornia Institute of Technology, Df James Bonner and Dr. Jan Zoevaart, announced today that they have discovered some sig nificant clues to its nature: ;They have evidence it is one of a number of fatty sub stances called steroids and that it is manufactured in the leaves of plants only in the absence of light. The next step is to Isolate it, analyze it and make it ar tificially. The United States Public Health Service is pro viding help to spur the re- j search. “A synthetic version of it to control crop production.” said Dr- Bonner, “could have far-' THE FEDERAL SPOTLIGHT ' Talk of Civilian Personnel Cuts In Defense Department Discounted By JOSEPH YOUNG Star Staff Writer Despite rumors of impending civilian personnel reductions in the Defense Department. Pen tagon insiders declare there will be little or no changes in the number of civilian work ers in the various defense units in the year ahead. One top Pentagon official said, "Actually, our real prob lem will be to keep civilian employment from growing larger." The world situation being what it is, Defense officials feel that the present 1 million- ! plus civilian personnel strength in, the Army, Navy and Air Force Departments will have to be kept around present levels. There has been talk that the Defense Department will order that the cost of the re cent Federal pay raise be partly absorbed by defense units through reduction in civilian employment. While defense units will be asked to absorb as much of the cost as pos sible through the attrition method of not filling vacancies unless absolutely necessary, no adverse effect on present em ployes is anticipated. And even the attrition method will be used to a limited, degree due to the world situation, Defense officials pre dict. 'As far as civilian employes in Army, Navy and Air Force headquarters here as well as in the Office of Secretary of Defense are concerned, there J A . 11 - ~ * i—fl.. > • especially under conditions • where sanitation is poor, as in _ time of natural disaster or war . or in situations of extreme pov t erty and deprivation. Then con s trol of some sort becomes nec essary. r Success Is Limited It is a sobering fact, however. ‘ as we shall presently see, that ' the method of massive chemi -1 cal control has had only lim-| ' ited success, and also threatens ' to worsen the very conditions ’ it is intended to curb. ! Under primitive agricultural ; conditions the farmer had few ; insect problems. These arose ’ with the intensification of ag riculture—the devotion of im ■ mense acreages to a single crop, i ' Such a system set the stage for ) explosive increases in specific ’ insect populations. Single-crop farming does not ’ take advantage of the princi \ pies by which nature works; it is agriculture as an engineer might conceive it to be. Nature ’ has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and bal ances by which nature holds the species within bounds. One important natural check is a limit on the amount of suitable habitat for each species. Ob viously then, an insect that lives on wheat can build up its population to much higher : levels on a farm devoted to 1 wheat than on one in which ’ wheat is intermingled with | 1 other crops to which the insect 1 is not adapted. The same thing happens in other situations. A generation i - - ■• - - p reaching effects on the world’s food supply.” Dr. Bonner and Dr. Zeevaartl theorize that their quarry al ways uses the same "M. 0. 'modus operand! or method of operation). From its birthplace in the leaves of a plant, florigen slips undetectably along the veins to the growing tips of the stems. There it somehow turns on the genetic mechanism that makes flowers, apparently while i the plant cell is busy splitting . itself in two. The scientific detectives have found that, contrary to popular notion, the length of darkness, rather than the amount of light, is vital to flowering. Using the cocklebur, they found that its leaves need at least 8*72 hours of darkness to manufacture florigen. After an> adequate dose of darkness, how- 1 ever, the cocklebur will flower ! in two days. Unable to put their finger i directly on florigen, the scien-l tists used the detective's old standby: Deduction. First they removed all but one leaf from several cockle bur plants. These leaves were dipped in several solutions. Some prevented the manufac- is a study now being made at the direction of Defense Secre tary McNamara to determine how operations can be stream lined and made more effective. This had led to reports that sharp cuts will be made in Defense Department civilian employment in Washington. However. Pentagon officials close to the situation express doubt that any significant civilian employment reduction will occur in Washington. They say the main objective of the study is to increase ef ficiency and scope of opera tions and that any civilian cutbacks that would result from that would be incidental. They express the view that Defense Department civilian employment in the Washing ton area will remain about the same. ** * * PROFESSIONAL GROUP CONVENTION - The Federal Professional Association will hold its founding conference from 9 am. to noon Wednes day jn the Departmental Audi torium, Constitution avenue be tween Twelfth and Thirteenth streets N.W. Formed to “promote the wel fare of professional personnel in Government," the new or ganization will be open to pro fessional people, engineers and scientists, and those in execu tive and managerial positions The group estimates it has a potential membership of 250,- 000 in Government. It will at j tempt to parallel the activities or more ago, the towns of large areas of the United States lined their streets with the noble elm tree. Now the beauty they hopefully created is threatened with complete de struction as disease sweeps through the elms, carried by a beetle that would have only limited chance to build up large populations and to spread from tree to tree if the elms were only occasional trees in a richly diversified planting. Invasion a Problem Another factor in the mod ern insect problem is one that must be viewed against a back ground of geologic and human history: The spreading of thousands of different kinds of organisms from their native homes to invade new territo ries. This world-wide migration has been studied and graphi cally described by the British ecologist. Charles Elton, in his recent book, “The Ecology of Invasions.’’ These invasions, both the naturally occurring and those dependent on human assistance, are likely to con tinue indefinitely. Quarantine and massive, I chemical campaigns are only extremely expensive ways of buying time. We are faced, ac cording to Dr. Elton, "with a life-and-death need not just to find new technological means of suppressing this plant or that animal’’; instead we need the basic knowledge of animal populations and their relations to their surroundings that will “promote an even balance and dampen down the explosive pure of proteins, some the! manufacture of nucleic acids, other the making of steroids.: Only the anti-steroid solution completely prevented flowering. iTheir speculative conclusion:! | Florigen is a steroid. This was important because scientists have been able to make many steroids synthetic ally. “Armed with synthetic anti steroids as well as steroid sprays,” Dr. Bonner said, “growers could spread crops over longer seasons, produce them when needed and in | crease their yield. “Steroid sprays could in crease flowering crops such as tree fruits and such vegetables as cauliflower and artichoke. “Aanti-steroids could be even more important economically. By the prevention of flower ing, they could accelerate growth of the edible parts of such plants as potatoes, car rots, onions and sugar cane .” Grader Gets Support Mrs. Clem Miller indorsed yesterday the candidacy of ' William Grader. Democrat ! nominated to succeed her hus band as Representative of the Ist congressional district in California. Mr. Miller, elected posthumously November 6. was killed in a plane crash on Oc tober 7. of the regular Government em ploye unions—the only differ ence being that it will act on behalf of professional employes ; in Government. Vincent Jay of Public Health Service is expected to be elected president of the FPA at its founding session on Wednes day. “We invite all interested Government employes who are in professional occupations to attend and participate in our Founding Conference,” Mr. Jay said. Among those who will ad dress the conclave on Wednes day morning are Representa tive Olsen, Democrat of Mon tana, a member of the House Civil Service Committee; Dr. Wilson Elkins, president of Maryland University; Robert Ramspeck, former House whip and former chairman of the ' Civil Service Commission. Mr. Jay said charter mem- I bership applications have been ■ received from Federal employes in 25 States and overseas. Leaders of the new group ■ feel that President Kennedy's r recent Federal labor-manage ment executive order will help ■ its progress. While Mr. Ken -1 nedy’s order prohibits man- • agerial and executive officials ■ from holding office in the I regular Government employe • unions, the order permits them to hold office and take active > part in organizations of their ■ own in the field of labor- ■ management relations, they point out. power of outbreaks and new ; invasions.” Much of the necessary knowl edge is now available, but we do not use it. It is not my con tention that chemical insecti cides must never be used. I do contend that we have put poi sonous and biologically potent ‘chemicals indiscriminately into the hands of persons largely or I wholly ignorant of their po tentials for harm. We have subjected enormous numbers of people to contact with these poisons, without their consent and often without their knowl edge. There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of spe cialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by in dustry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the I public protests, confronted with' some obvious evidence of dam-I aging results of pesticide ap plications, it is fed little tran quilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand. “The obligation to endure gives us the right to know." Published by Hcurhton Mifflin Co.) (Copyright, 1982. by Rachel Carton. Tomorrow: Elixirs of Death PAKISTAN | Continued From Page A-l ber of both. It signed up for SEATO in 1954 and CENTO, originally the Baghdad Pact. , in 1955. Bitter Debate on Arms The flow of Western arms to i Prime Minister Nehru’s Indian! government remained a sub ject of bitter debate in the Na tional Assembly. Sardar Bahadur Khan, a brother of the President and leader of the opposition, called for Pakistan to drop but of SEATO *nd CENTO, adopt neutrality and promote friend ship with all nations—" Co mmunist or capitalist.” He accused the United i States, through its arms con tributions, of expanding the frontier hostilities between In dia and China into a full fledged war for its own bene fit An opposition rightist reli gious leader, Farid Ahmed, called the Western arms delivs eries to India a gross betrayal of Pakistan, which he described as “the friendliest nation of Asia.” Chiefs of United States and British missions now surveying India’s arms situation are ex pected to visit Pakistan soon for conciliatory talks. The chiefs are W. Averell Harriman, United States Assistant Secre tary of State, and Duncan Sandys, British Commonwealth, Secretary. Satellite Launched VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., Nov. 24 OPTOMETRISTS 901 G ST. N.W. ME. 8-3829 SbWb>wUL, B BJp B S £ q*B* R RBwWwEBMw ■! 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